Nica and the Monk
Perhaps one of the best jazz album covers ever: Underground by Thelonious Monk (Columbia, May 1968). Where else are you going to find Lugers, an MP40, an M1911, M1 pineapple grenades, demo gear, a field telephone, and multiple radio sets, as well as a Morse key?
The album cover is an ode to the young British-born Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica ‘Nica’ de Koenigswarter (née Rothschild), who, at the time of the initial German occupation of Northern France some 85 years ago this month, opened her Château d’Abondant to displaced refugees and evacuees. She later managed to escape the country and joined her husband, Jules de Koenigswarter, who was abroad with De Gaulle’s Free French forces. She pitched in herself as a codebreaker for Gaullist intelligence and served as an on-air host at Radio Brazzaville (the Free French England-based Radio Europe). She finally became an ambulance driver for the 1st Free French Division during the North African Campaign in 1942-43.
The Baroness, who moved to New York after the war, later became a noted patron of the arts, particularly jazz musicians, including Monk (who was 4F during WWII), personally. This is why several jazzmen have songs about “Nica” (Kenny Drew: Blues for Nica, Horace Silver: Nica’s Dream, Gigi Gryce: Nica’s Tempo, Sonny Clark: Nica, Tommy Flanagan: Thelonica, et.al)
Her image is reportedly hidden in the cover as well, perhaps mocked up with a STEN gun.
The back of the album:
Take it away, Mr. Monk: